Story Archives of 'Mental Health'

The Granite State used to win national praise for the way it cared for people with mental illness, but a new report says the system is now “broken”. It also suggests a new ten-year overhaul plan. We’ll get the details, look at the state of our mental health system and how and why it went downhill.

Guests

• Louis Josephson, president and CEO of Riverbend Community Mental Health in Concord
• Nancy Rollins, Associate Commissioner for the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services
• Kathy Sgambati, Democratic state senator from Tilton and former deputy commissioner and acting commissioner of the Department of Health and Human Services

We'll also hear from

• Donald Shumway, president and CEO of Crotched Mountain Rehabilitation Center, former commissioner of Health and Human Services and longtime leader in New Hampshire's mental health care reform efforts

There is no argument that depression is one of the most widespread mental illnesses. About 16% of all people will encounter at least one major depressive episode in their lives. Since 1986, the drug Prozac has been prescribed for many depression sufferers, becoming the most widely prescribed anti-depression medication in history.

Today, new research is discovering hidden benefits to this drug, and it’s transforming not only the way we treat depression, but the very science of this disease. Jonah Lehrer wrote an article for The Boston Globe about the effects of Prozac beyond the treatment of depression, and he joins us to talk about it on the show today.

Also, Prozac is not the only prescription drug our culture has become increasingly familiar with in the last decade. Pharmaceutical companies spend billions of dollars every year on marketing to make sure we know the latest, greatest pills hitting the local drugstore. In fact, direct-to-consumer advertising of brand name drugs has grown from $700 million in 1997 to more than $4 billion today.

Melody Petersen believes that has created a society that is hooked on meds we don’t need. She spent four years covering the drug companies for The New York Times, and she just wrote a new book called "Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs."

Mental health issues are getting a second look lately, in part because of a few incidents in recent days- a mall shooting in Omaha by a teenager said to have mental health problems and last month’s hostage situation at Hillary Clinton’s Rochester campaign office where a mentally disturbed person specifically said he wanted to talk to Senator Clinton about the lack of mental health services in the Granite State. We’ll take a look at where mental health care is in the state – including how access, affordability, and attitudes may or may not have changed.

Guests

• Louis Josephson, President and CEO of Riverbend Community Mental Health in Concord
• Nancy Rollins, Director of the Division of Community-Based Care Services at the Department of Health and Human Services
• Paul Gorman, Board Member with the NH Chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness and President and CEO for West Central Behavioral Health, the community mental health center associated with the Dartmouth - Hitchcock Medical Center. He was formerly Director of Mental Health, Substance Abuse and Developmental Services for the state of New Hampshire, served as the Superintendent of New Hampshire Hospital (NHH), the single public psychiatric hospital in New Hampshire and was the Director of the West Institute at the Dartmouth Psychiatric Research Center. He also worked for a private psychiatric hospital in Boston, Massachusetts.

Last month, Androscoggin Valley Hospital in Berlin shut down its inpatient psychiatric unit.

With the unit closed, the North Country has no facility to provide inpatient care to hundreds of people a year who are suicidal or are prone to fits of violence.

State and local officials are looking for ways to fill the gap, but there are concerns that those efforts will fall short.

NHPR’s Dianne Finch has more.

B.J. from Concord needed help for her teenage daughter Michelle, who was going through difficult times. Riverbend helped Michelle when she needed it.